As many of you are well aware I went to a wedding earlier this year in Edinburgh. It was fantastic. As many of you are also well aware, I have a tendency to embarrass myself at weddings; this one being no different.

The weekend started off with a 10 hour flight from Vancouver to London Gatwick where I enjoyed breakfast (read: a quick bite and a few pints) with my Uncle before hopping another plane to Edinburgh and having a litre bottle of Johnny Walker Black unceremoniously removed from me at security (bastards). Upon deplaning – I love that word – in Edinburgh, however, I was in a festive mood and ready to party. So too, as it turns out, were my lodging companions Matt and Heather. After a brief sojourn to what would become our local (see below), we had found our well-appointed apartment and were ready to hit the town.

The first night being the stag party, Matt and I dropped Heather off at the ladies supper and proceeded to Leith’s banana flats, AKA an apartment building shaped a little bit like a banana in a dodgy part of town that our taxi driver tried to dissuade us from stopping in. We were meeting up with the men (and a larger than life opera singer named Janet) for a Trainspotting walking tour. The tour itself was pretty informative although it did feel a mite exploitative as we wandered through a still economically depressed area talking about how horrible it was. Being only the first stop in an evening of excessive drinking, it goes without saying that we were well and truly bladdered when the revelry ended at 4am.

In the meantime, we enjoyed a vaguely Italian dinner, hit up a subterranean club at which I danced my socks off and almost pulled, and ended up at a club with a structurally questionable dancefloor where I continued to trip the light fantastic. It is at this point, stumbling out of a club at 4am that the groom, Dan, handed me scribbled note and informed me that I am to be an usher, with Matt, at the ceremony. More on this later.

As the sun began to rise across Scotland’s rolling hills, Matt and I ventured to a 24 hour ScotMid and mingled with the bleary eyed 17 year olds for whom this kind of partying was the norm, rather than excused by a transatlantic celebratory haze.